


The Hong Kong Hazel

by enjcltaire



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: A Spoonful of Murder, ASoM Mild Spoilers, Both of them are angels in this, Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 08:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13655664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjcltaire/pseuds/enjcltaire
Summary: Daisy and Hazel are preparing for the Svenssons' party. Hazel struggles to adjust to life in Hong Kong again after becoming used to England and returning to find things changed.Set before Part 1 Chapter 11 of A Spoonful of Murder. Mild spoilers!





	The Hong Kong Hazel

**Author's Note:**

> WHELP, book 6 has been out for less than a week and here I am already posting a fic. Apologies to those who haven't got hold of it yet - I'm about halfway through and I am in LOVE. It really is fantastic. This fic basically came from me having a fangirl moment when Daisy called Hazel pretty. I'm loving hearing more about Hazel's feelings towards her life in Hong Kong so I decided to go into that. Once again a spoiler warning, there isn't a massive amount in here that could ruin the main plot (nothing about the murder is mentioned) for anyone that hasn't read it, but there are mentions of characters and a tiiiiny bit of plot that come into the book during the first part. Read at your own risk! Enjoy and as always comments/feedback/criticism are appreciated. <3

I loosened my hair from its plait. Looking in the mirror and seeing Daisy standing behind me felt wrong, but right. I can’t explain it. It hadn’t been long enough for me to adjust to being in Hong Kong yet, and I was back under circumstances that I wasn’t sure I liked. Ah Yeh was dead, and the stupid baby Teddy, and Su Li...everything was so wrong. And every so often I looked up and saw Daisy and my stomach did something strange, and my life felt like a jigsaw puzzle missing a piece or two (which would make Daisy tear her hair out in frustration), but to me it still looked fine (I do not mind these things too much. Daisy, however, gets awfully bothered). It was a different picture to what it had been when I’d stepped onto that dreadful boat with tears streaming down my face, or at least it looked different to me. But I wondered if maybe I was just seeing it through different eyes.

We were dressed for the party. I looked at myself in the mirror and smiled. Here I didn’t feel like an outsider, and standing next to Daisy in her beautiful dress with her golden hair that glinted in the light and her blue eyes, I felt a little bit less inadequate than I did at Deepdean, Fallingford, on the Orient Express or in Cambridge. Here I was not special in an unpleasant way, nor did people whisper rumours about what my father did for a living. I can’t tell you how nice it is to be home.

But at the same time, there was a half of myself I had to hide in Hong Kong, and I was beginning to realise just how much life halfway across the world had changed me. My family underestimate me, and I suppose I did not see that when I was younger, but now I know an awful lot more about people and the way they behave. They do not expect me to be clever, because in Hong Kong girls are not clever. Girls are mothers and wives here, and in England things are so terribly different. I thought about how it took Deepdean less than a minute to accept that two girls were in love, and then I thought about how my family would react if I, or someone I knew, came home with a girl. I put it out of my mind. I did not want to imagine it. My eyes met Daisy’s and I looked away hurriedly. There is no point in thinking about things like that when nothing can be done about them.

“Can I see your pin?” Daisy asked me, walking over to the mirror where I was fixing my hair. I held out the jade pin Ah Yeh had given me and tried to ignore the pangs of sadness in my stomach. Daisy took it carefully and turned it over in her hand, feeling its smooth surface. She smiled and gave it back to me. “It’s beautiful.”

I looked at it and imagined Ah Yeh holding it in his big, soft hands that felt so much like home. I blinked back tears. Daisy reached out and took my hand. “Come on, Watson. Buck up,” she whispered, but I could hear the comforting intent in her voice. I almost laughed. She never does know how to say the right thing, but I didn’t care, because it was so Daisy, and that was enough.

Shaking my head, I fixed my hair in place with the pin. I was silent for a second, watching Daisy in my peripheral vision. I couldn’t seem to slow my heartbeat down, and Daisy’s hand in mine was making it beat more. I bit my lip and looked up.

Daisy smiled. She was dressed in a pale blue dress which swept the floor in what seemed like hundreds of layers of netting and silk. Her hair was twisted up and pinned with a diamond clip which glittered. Everything she wore complimented her perfectly, the dress matching her eyes and the clip mirroring how the angles of her face caught the light when she moved certain ways. Her face was made of shadows and mystery, and each time I looked at her she seemed more of an enigma to me, the kind of conundrum she stays up all night trying to solve. The best case I’d ever been on. Yes, I wanted to solve Daisy Wells. I wanted to know every part of her like she knew me (although I wish she didn’t sometimes).

“Things are different here,” she stated as we left the room. I laughed. “Of course they’re different. We’re in Hong Kong, Daisy, this isn’t England.” Daisy didn’t reply for a moment.

“Yes, I suppose we are. But gosh, I never thought it’d be this hard to understand. Chinese is so awfully confusing, you know, and these customs are something I’ll never get used to.” I shrugged.

“Cantonese,” I automatically corrected. “But, yes, you’re right. I’ve lived here all my life – England is as hard to understand for me as Hong Kong is for you. You’re all pink and white and tall and thin and simply mad about hockey for some reason.” Daisy smirked. “Come on, Hazel. You’re as pink and white as the rest of us inside, somewhere in there,” she whispered, tapping my chest. I flushed and shook my head.

“I’ll never be pink and white like you, Daisy. Just because I’ve lived in England for two years, it doesn’t mean I don’t belong in Hong Kong. I was born in a country that seems like another world to England, Daisy. Here people don’t think the same, or act the same. People just aren’t the same. And sometimes I wish I could pick up little bits of Hong Kong and take them back to England and make my own place, a mishmash of the two that has cheongsams and mooncake and mah lai goh, and squashed fly biscuits and rolling green fields and...well, and you.” I stopped, breathing heavily. “They’re different. Sometimes I feel like I don’t fit into either of them.”

Daisy took a second to process this, and I could see the cogs and screws in her brilliant brain turning. Then she said, “Well, you’re in Hong Kong now, and you’re the...well, the Hong Kong Hazel, I suppose. And in England you’re the Deepdean Hazel, the one that I know.” I stopped her there and took her hands. “You know Hazel, Daisy. Me, Hazel. Different languages don’t make me a different person.” Daisy shrugged.

“As I was saying,” she continued, giving me a rather comical side glance. I giggled. “They don’t have to coexist. They can exist in their own spaces, when they need to exist, I suppose. If you live now. There’s no time like the present, Watson.” I smiled and nodded.

“You always have to be so maddeningly right, don’t you?” I said, shaking my head. Daisy grinned. “Of course. That’s why I’m President and you’re Vice-President. Now, shall we?” She offered me her arm and I took it. “Come on Hazel. You look awfully pretty.” I blushed. “So do you.”

Living two lives in two worlds has made me a different person, a person that I’m learning is difficult to love. Sometimes I think nobody knows the real me after all this time, but then I look at Daisy (and I always can, because she’s always beside me), and I start to think maybe I’m wrong. And then she smiles, and I know I’m wrong. Because, like I said, she’s always right, and the strange thing is, I don’t seem to mind.


End file.
